


a shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn

by cosmicpoet



Series: momoharu week 2019 [6]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Enchanted Forest, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Forests, The Enchanted Forest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 05:38:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18440150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: Maki and Kaito are forest spirits in a world that treats them with kindness.





	a shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn

It’s a common misconception that everything rots. Apples, right down to the core, are a ticking time bomb of waiting for the exact right moment to exist, at least in the word of mile markers and car engines and airplanes circling the sky trying to make clouds out of metal. This is the majority of the world, a bitter chemical that seeps into rot and holds truth to what, here, is not a misconception; all banks and artificial gardens and smog that seeps into the thick slip of lungs.

But the existence of the commercial universe does not rule as absolute. The best it can do is to be loud, be brash, make itself seem like the only option and drown out the possibility of things growing in other places. It’s rare, nowadays, to find a little pocket of a world, completely sealed and self-serving, but they do exist. Not a synthetic existence, but a kind one.

It’s places like these - the forests and the underwater caves and the overarching expanse of sky - that flourish in their own ways. Far beyond the comprehension of humanity, they tread the depths of folklore and understand that their lives are mere stories, which will inevitably be watered down and make their way into modernity, but that will be okay. There’s no pretence or want for recognition, only the sunlight of a warm life, and the knowledge that interpretation of reality does not matter if the reality is contained and satisfactory.

Sunlight lingers a little softer and a little longer in the forest. Maki stretches out her wings, feeling the ground beneath her breathe. The wind sings and the light filters so gently through the leaves, dancing and golden when the breeze harmonises with the trees and the forest becomes a pinhole camera, through which the light is a marionette, airy violin strings pulling taught what gives life to this place. Waiting, alone, she wonders when Kaito will be back.

He’s gone out to fish by the stream. It’s been hours, now, and he’s known for becoming lost in the magnificence of nature, and she decides to find him, perhaps join him. There’s never promise of conversation, but they don’t need it - centuries together have sparked a comfort that can only come when two creatures fit together like the world has willed it so.

The leaves under her feet seems to blow a path for her to find him, and she does, his eyes closed as he lies down under the sun. When she approaches, he recognises her by instinct alone, and sits up, opening his eyes and smiling at her.

“Maki Roll,” he says, “nice to see you.”

“Not caught anything yet?”

“Nothin’ so far, darlin’! Come fish with me.”

“Alright,” she says, picking up his spare road and casting it wide. He does the same. The light reflects off the water in so many places, rising and dipping with the gentle waves; glowing white dots of infinitesimal, untouchable mirrors dance along the water. She dips her feet into the cool stream, feeling something fleeting over her legs - water, passing, then gone. As she rests her head on Kaito’s shoulder, she fiddles with the fishing line, hoping for a bite.

“It’s warm today,” she says.

“Mm,” he replies, putting his arm around her, “it’ll be nice this evening. We should sit outside and watch the stars.”

“Of course we should. It’s the perfect time for it.”

Pulling her line back, she catches something and lifts it out of the water. Satisfied, they make their way back home - a home that they’ve crafted together, wooden and creaking, but solid and having stood for hundreds of years. There’s a roaring fire, and Kaito boils a pot of water for cooking. With the sound of crackling flames and logs that burn on the hearth, and the gentle, electric hum of cicadas to sing them to rest, they cook the fish together and eat as though the act itself is a sacrament. 

Let there be softness in the togetherness of centuries of love. Let them curl up by the fire as though they care for nothing more than warmth, and worry for nothing more than tending to the flames. Vestal Virgins have nothing on this, keeping the flame alive for _purpose,_ sinking into the earth and letting it flow as spirit through their love. This is the kind of love that keeps the world alive.

Once the meal is finished, the stars, having patiently held their breath and waited, burn themselves into the sky, reclaiming an afterimage as testament to reality. The backdrop of the universe is a welcoming catacombs, a poem about death and about lasting legacies, sung to lovers as they find not what they are looking for, but what the world wills them to. And they - Maki and Kaito - have been willed to this; this exact evening, these exact stars, this exact sequence of _I love you_ and _forever is ours_ and _look up and try to claim place for where you think the world begins._

Above them, there are no airplanes. No smog. Nothing but the grandeur of the universe - this universe. Their universe. Rot exists outside of here, but dies an incomprehensible death between the bounds of eternity, the same infinity that crowns Maki and Kaito in all the love of pantheism and personality.

And it doesn’t matter - it really doesn’t matter - if they fall asleep under the stars. This world is not an evil one, and the walls that Maki had feared having to build, millennia ago when she was alone, have not been constructed. The worst case scenario is getting slightly cold. Nothing more.

So, when she rests her head on his chest and feels the faint hum of his breathing, she’s comfortable. And safe, which has higher rank and importance now more than ever, knowing that she will never be alone again. And the sunlight, which has since crept backwards and swallowed up the earth into the pregnant darkness of night, will return, because the world turns and turns and never gives in.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for day six of #momoharuweek2019 and also Kaito's birthday. Today's prompt was 'fantasy'.
> 
> Title from 'Shrike' by Hozier.


End file.
